Any plans to fix inflation in the economy? (PC/NA)

TaSheen · March 31

Dax_Draconis wrote: »

Craft bags have unlimited storage so there is little incentive to sell any mats at all unless the current market rate is temptingly high. Players with subscriptions can hoard them indefinitely.

Yup. I never sell anything through traders because I despise this system. I have plenty of gold for what I do, I don't NEED to interact with the "selling on traders" system.

wolfie1.0. · March 31

sarahthes wrote: »

hiyde wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

hiyde wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

The solution, then, is to have things buyable with AP that translate into gold. There are some, but a lot of them are really RNG-based and the average PvPer isn't likely to convert enough AP to gold to fund their potions on a weekly or monthly basis.

Curious to know, with current pricing, how much gold the average PvP player needs each week to buy all the pots they'd like to have.

Depends how much they are pvping. A stack of tripots or heroism pots will last about 3-4 hours, give or take, so that's either 300K or 2m a night, depending on what you're using (on PC NA).

So, 75k per hour on tripots expense using 1 pot every ~2 mins. One hour of mediocre node farming can easily earn 500k. For every 6 hours of PvP, assuming absolutely no other income sources, it's one hour of farming. 86% of their time PvPing, 14% farming.

If I mathed right.

How much farming do they have to do to afford ulti pots?

Depends on how much they are willing to pay, and how much time they have to farm/shop and how good they are at either.

xylena_lazarow · March 31

Sakiri wrote: »

But we do. You can too.

How about neither of us do?

I get why the hardcore MMO grinders see this as heresy, but this is logic I'll never understand.

I_killed_Vivec · March 31

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Sakiri wrote: »

But we do. You can too.

How about neither of us do?

I get why the hardcore MMO grinders see this as heresy, but this is logic I'll never understand.

Some people see PvP as endgame.

Some people see elite PvE as endgame.

Some people even see housing as endgame (hint, I don't, but I understand there are people who do!)

Some people see trading as endgame (and I've seen people with over two BILLION gold).

Some people like to farm, and craft, and sell.

It is not for any of us to say how each other should seek enjoyment in the game.

hiyde · March 31

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Depends on how much they are willing to pay, and how much time they have to farm/shop and how good they are at either.

Of course. I was just trying to get some numbers to work with since it comes up often in these conversations that PvP players don't have time to farm up mats (or gold to buy potions). I was just curious what the need worked out to.

I talked to one of our long-time PvP leads and he says consuming 50 tripots an hour isn't unusual.

So, with no other income source, if someone simply farmed mats to pay for their pots, it's about 8 mins of farming for every 1 hour of PvP. Any other sources of income would bring that down, of course.

Just curiosity on my part on how bad of a pain point this is.

hiyde · March 31

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

It is not for any of us to say how each other should seek enjoyment in the game.

Absolutely agree. But this is the norm in MMOs to pay for consumables one way or another, one of the many, many non-pvp things that players must do to be effective in PvP.

notyuu · March 31

The real question is how would they fix it without causing massive currency deflaton

LaintalAy · March 31

hiyde wrote: »

NoTimeToWait wrote: »

Yes, supply and demand is the definition of any economy. But lower prices on some items don't mean there is no inflation. You just need to compare weekly gold usage on necessities in total (like how much gold you needed to support your activities 2, 4 years ago compared to now). And the main question is how many people find it harder to support their weekly activities.

Oh inflation is a thing for sure. Anyone remember 4k Dreugh Wax? Now it's more than 10x that price on PC NA.

I remember when a really solid bid in the top trading city was under 500k. I thought it was insane when they reached 4 mill.
Now the bids are 9 figures in the top cities. It's crazypants...

I remember when Dreugh Wax was 2k.
Its now about 23k on EU.
If it's 40k on NA, then blame the people paying that much for it.

If you don't want to pay that much then pay to convert your skill points into crafting. Farm or buy raw mats and decon the wax from there. Free tempers are possible. You just need to want them badly enough.

Your comment on Guild traders has no relevance. Guild trader costs have no direct impact on prices. People don't put up prices just because 'the Guild' spent a truckload on the trader this week.

Prices go up when savvy traders see holes in the market that only they can fill and speculate accordingly. I can think of two very basic food items that come from 'baskets' in low quantities, that fit that bill.

When I sell dreugh wax, my pricing addon suggests an average price; it tells me how many were sold over the past 30 days.
This figure is currently showing at around 23500 gold per piece.

I CAN ASSURE YOU that if I move that price to 24000, they will not sell. Others will be using the recommended price
If I move that price to 23000 or lower, they will sell within 2-3 hours.
Those are very basic facts on a popular commodity.

The pricing of popular items is based on average sales recorded through ATT or MM.

There is no rampant inflation on popular items. If prices are going up, then people are prepared to pay more when they find find the overpriced versions. That's market forces, not inflation.

Sakiri · April 1

sarahthes wrote: »

Sakiri wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

"I don't like doing [insert unfavoured task here]. ZoS, change the game so I don't have to do it."

It's a game not a job. If the game is making you do unfavoured tasks to progress, yes that's the game's problem.

There's no reason PvPers should need to spend hours picking flowers to be competitive in PvP.

There's no reason raiders should have to pvp or pick flowers or run normal dungeons for ap/tripots/transmute crystals either.

But we do. You can too.

Nah. Raiding should be lucrative enough that it generates enough gold to pay other people to pick flowers. Once you get to a certain point, you shouldn't have to choose between 'do I raid today or do I afk pick flowers for 6 hours to fund the rest of the week'.

Works in every other game. It's part of the effort in performing your best.

I'm starting to wonder how lazy some players are.

Sakiri · April 1

sarahthes wrote: »

hiyde wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

hiyde wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

The solution, then, is to have things buyable with AP that translate into gold. There are some, but a lot of them are really RNG-based and the average PvPer isn't likely to convert enough AP to gold to fund their potions on a weekly or monthly basis.

Curious to know, with current pricing, how much gold the average PvP player needs each week to buy all the pots they'd like to have.

Depends how much they are pvping. A stack of tripots or heroism pots will last about 3-4 hours, give or take, so that's either 300K or 2m a night, depending on what you're using (on PC NA).

So, 75k per hour on tripots expense using 1 pot every ~2 mins. One hour of mediocre node farming can easily earn 500k. For every 6 hours of PvP, assuming absolutely no other income sources, it's one hour of farming. 86% of their time PvPing, 14% farming.

If I mathed right.

How much farming do they have to do to afford ulti pots?

Don't use ulti pots then.

Dragon rheum only comes from dragons and the dragonguard chest. Sometimes the alch satchels from Archive. Open those daily and you'll have at least some of them, but most folks I know only use them to parse with BECAUSE they're expensive.

That crap is more rare and expensive than columbine.

hiyde · April 1

LaintalAy wrote: »

Your comment on Guild traders has no relevance. Guild trader costs have no direct impact on prices. People don't put up prices just because 'the Guild' spent a truckload on the trader this week.

Hey I'm very new to this trade guild concept and appreciate the tutorial.

sarahthes · April 1

Sakiri wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

Sakiri wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

"I don't like doing [insert unfavoured task here]. ZoS, change the game so I don't have to do it."

It's a game not a job. If the game is making you do unfavoured tasks to progress, yes that's the game's problem.

There's no reason PvPers should need to spend hours picking flowers to be competitive in PvP.

There's no reason raiders should have to pvp or pick flowers or run normal dungeons for ap/tripots/transmute crystals either.

But we do. You can too.

Nah. Raiding should be lucrative enough that it generates enough gold to pay other people to pick flowers. Once you get to a certain point, you shouldn't have to choose between 'do I raid today or do I afk pick flowers for 6 hours to fund the rest of the week'.

Works in every other game. It's part of the effort in performing your best.

I'm starting to wonder how lazy some players are.

I'm not lazy at all. But I can't keep up with the amount of content I'm doing / want to do. I'm literally using around 600-1000 tripots a week, and around 300 ulti pots. I farm instead of raiding on Saturday, although my pvp raid group is starting up so I'll be going from only occasional pvp to twice weekly pvp and that will partially eat up my Saturdays.

The *only* reason I'm able to keep up with my expenses in game is because I do carries on the side. But yesterday I did carries and leveled up a new character instead of mat farming, so I'm sure I'll be behind again by the end of the week.

Sakiri wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

hiyde wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

hiyde wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

The solution, then, is to have things buyable with AP that translate into gold. There are some, but a lot of them are really RNG-based and the average PvPer isn't likely to convert enough AP to gold to fund their potions on a weekly or monthly basis.

Curious to know, with current pricing, how much gold the average PvP player needs each week to buy all the pots they'd like to have.

Depends how much they are pvping. A stack of tripots or heroism pots will last about 3-4 hours, give or take, so that's either 300K or 2m a night, depending on what you're using (on PC NA).

So, 75k per hour on tripots expense using 1 pot every ~2 mins. One hour of mediocre node farming can easily earn 500k. For every 6 hours of PvP, assuming absolutely no other income sources, it's one hour of farming. 86% of their time PvPing, 14% farming.

If I mathed right.

How much farming do they have to do to afford ulti pots?

Don't use ulti pots then.

Dragon rheum only comes from dragons and the dragonguard chest. Sometimes the alch satchels from Archive. Open those daily and you'll have at least some of them, but most folks I know only use them to parse with BECAUSE they're expensive.

That crap is more rare and expensive than columbine.

At least in PvE raiding, using ulti pots means that I will have ultimate available when it is needed to do the content my group is currently doing. If I don't use ulti pots, at least on Taleria HM, my group may not get the matron skips we are going for, which makes the whole fight harder.

AnduinTryggva · April 1

freespirit wrote: »

It is entirely possible to get whatever you need by just playing the game and doing activities that reward that item.

If your argument is you dislike those activities and only want to do your favoured one, well then you need to buy those items from people who have done it for you and pay the prices asked!

That is not fully true.

Certain items are a one pick item with a cooldown, for instance ressource nodes and worse alchemy nodes.

While ordinary crafting nodes will respawn after a while the alchemy node type will be random. This makes certain alchemy nodes per definition pretty scarce.

And we have bots. We had a huge bot flue during the Wrothgar event this year which emptied basically most cloth nodes in entire regiones. It was extremely rare to harvest a cloth. Other ressource nodes were untouched. Because of prices. Harvest all cloth nodes, extract them and get hardener. Sell these hardener for insane prices. Since intact cloth nodes are due to the massive farming rare and drop rates of hardener even rarer hardener prices soar like hell. This is the business case for these farmer bots or farmer factories: They deprive you from the source and then sell it to you at high prices.

And the respawn time of these nodes is just too long compared to the speed with which these nodes can be farmed. I tell you I have seen regions that were almost entirely empty on cloth nodes. As I have an addon I can see it if a specific ressource type is active or not.

After some complaints the bot situation temporarily improved but we are almost back where entire regions are empty farmed. Not yet as bad as early this year but still making it hard for people to find cloth nodes.

So to say that everything is available to everybody is only valid in theory.

Zodiarkslayer · April 1

SilverBride wrote: »

The economy is set not only by the sellers but the buyers as well. If players won't pay what they think is an overinflated price the sellers will have to lower their prices.

In theory, yes. In practice, no. It works for products of daily consumption, usually tied to you (the person and your physical functions). You know, like Milk and flour and butter, pruduce, etc.

But as soon as you have (digital) products, that satisfy your vices and your vanity, all math and rationality goes out of the window. You now walk the colourful and winding paths of psychology.

That is one of the most overlooked aspects of ESO's economy. Human Behaviour. 😊

EF321 · April 1

AnduinTryggva wrote: »

freespirit wrote: »

It is entirely possible to get whatever you need by just playing the game and doing activities that reward that item.

If your argument is you dislike those activities and only want to do your favoured one, well then you need to buy those items from people who have done it for you and pay the prices asked!

That is not fully true.

Certain items are a one pick item with a cooldown, for instance ressource nodes and worse alchemy nodes.

While ordinary crafting nodes will respawn after a while the alchemy node type will be random. This makes certain alchemy nodes per definition pretty scarce.

And we have bots. We had a huge bot flue during the Wrothgar event this year which emptied basically most cloth nodes in entire regiones. It was extremely rare to harvest a cloth. Other ressource nodes were untouched. Because of prices. Harvest all cloth nodes, extract them and get hardener. Sell these hardener for insane prices. Since intact cloth nodes are due to the massive farming rare and drop rates of hardener even rarer hardener prices soar like hell. This is the business case for these farmer bots or farmer factories: They deprive you from the source and then sell it to you at high prices.

And the respawn time of these nodes is just too long compared to the speed with which these nodes can be farmed. I tell you I have seen regions that were almost entirely empty on cloth nodes. As I have an addon I can see it if a specific ressource type is active or not.

After some complaints the bot situation temporarily improved but we are almost back where entire regions are empty farmed. Not yet as bad as early this year but still making it hard for people to find cloth nodes.

So to say that everything is available to everybody is only valid in theory.

Waiting for bot army to show up and steal my resources

https://youtu.be/UMgjjLLEEWc

AnduinTryggva · April 1

mikejezz wrote: »

A super easy fix would be to make it possible to trade gold for crowns without having to do it through discord.

Either by trading transaction between people or like in guild wars 2, where you grade gold for gems.

Zos sn't clearly interested in this for whatever reason, but would be a very good way to fix inflation

The reason is obvious. In game gold is for free and just a question of grind (even if low) while crown is real money. So each player swapping their insane amounts of in game gold into crowns is often a missed occasion for ZOS to get real money.

On a side note: I have to find this again but watching a build video lately I saw that that guy had a huge huge amount of gold in the order of magnitude of billions...

AnduinTryggva · April 1

EF321 wrote: »

Waiting for bot army to show up and steal my resources

https://youtu.be/UMgjjLLEEWc

Wow, you sat five minutes beside a columbine! All that effort for something that hardly will be farmed by bots?

And zero proof as we don't know where you made it, when you made it and on which server you made it.

I was talking about cloth nodes and they were heavily bot-farmed and again so to a fortunately lesser level than before the bot wipe. As I've pointed out.

EF321 · April 1

AnduinTryggva wrote: »

EF321 wrote: »

Waiting for bot army to show up and steal my resources

https://youtu.be/UMgjjLLEEWc

Wow, you sat five minutes beside a columbine! All that effort for something that hardly will be farmed by bots?

And zero proof as we don't know where you made it, when you made it and on which server you made it.

I was talking about cloth nodes and they were heavily bot-farmed and again so to a fortunately lesser level than before the bot wipe. As I've pointed out.

Where is your proof? Show us your video. Anything to backup your claims?

Sakiri · April 1

I've never seen a zone devoid of a node type...

AnduinTryggva · April 1

Sakiri wrote: »

I've never seen a zone devoid of a node type...

Surely it is not 100% because they do respawn. But it is sufficient if only 10% remain and they are scattered all over the place that farming becomes a lottery for people trying to get hardeners.

It also depends on the time. I don't know how it looks on the NA server but on the EU server before noon it can be hard to find sufficient cloth nodes that have a meaning when looking to get a gear up to gold level. Certain DLC regions are less concerned of course but there are folks that don't have access to these regions.

This explains the prices for dreughwax or how do you explain that dreughwax is so expensive? If cloth nodes were abundant you'd pick them up on the fly.

To be honest, I think such ressources like dreughwax should be available on normal sellers for a reasonable price. Not cheap but not as expensive as we see now. This would quickly eliminate that bot farming and leave enough cloth for those people who want to save gold.

I_killed_Vivec · April 1

Sakiri wrote: »

I've never seen a zone devoid of a node type...

Follow me round Craglorn, I will strip it bare

LaintalAy wrote: »

When I sell dreugh wax, my pricing addon suggests an average price; it tells me how many were sold over the past 30 days.
This figure is currently showing at around 23500 gold per piece.

I CAN ASSURE YOU that if I move that price to 24000, they will not sell. Others will be using the recommended price
If I move that price to 23000 or lower, they will sell within 2-3 hours.

I rarely sell tempers, but I do sell a lot of stuff - I have a lot of stuff to sell. The average selling price is a double-edged sword. Some say it raises the price because it's easy to make sure you aren't selling too cheaply. For me it is a downwards pressure on prices - I want to sell quickly, I want you to buy what I am selling, not what someone else is offering. So I make sure I am well below the average selling price, which in turn brings the average down...

RedFireDisco · April 1

The problem is that there are people for whom the ENTIRE end-game for them is trading, ergo; all they do is buy and sell, thusly jacking up the price while they snatch up everything below a certain line.

This leads to a constant increase in prices for normal players

It drives prices up and people out of the game.

Sakiri · April 1

I_killed_Vivec wrote: »

Sakiri wrote: »

I've never seen a zone devoid of a node type...

Follow me round Craglorn, I will strip it bare

LaintalAy wrote: »

When I sell dreugh wax, my pricing addon suggests an average price; it tells me how many were sold over the past 30 days.
This figure is currently showing at around 23500 gold per piece.

I CAN ASSURE YOU that if I move that price to 24000, they will not sell. Others will be using the recommended price
If I move that price to 23000 or lower, they will sell within 2-3 hours.

I rarely sell tempers, but I do sell a lot of stuff - I have a lot of stuff to sell. The average selling price is a double-edged sword. Some say it raises the price because it's easy to make sure you aren't selling too cheaply. For me it is a downwards pressure on prices - I want to sell quickly, I want you to buy what I am selling, not what someone else is offering. So I make sure I am well below the average selling price, which in turn brings the average down...

Trust me, I strip Craglorn bare too, but I've never ridden through a zone and seen it devoid of any given node type.

AnduinTryggva · April 1

Of course it is not 100% empty (I write this now a second time in this thread) but enough emptied to prevent any MEANINGFULL farming.
As I also said on multiple occasion the situation was really terrible early this year, it improved considerably after ZOS apparantly took on the issue with farming bots. However I DO observe a tendency back to previous state where entire regions were almost devoid of cloth nodes. It is not as bad as early this year but still not a fully sane situation. This is mirrored by the insane prices for dreughwax.

You know very well you need a good load of cloth nodes to obtain ONE dreughwax. And you need 8 dreughwax to make one armour item gold quality.

Now you have seven armor items and if you run entirely on light or medium armor you need 56 Dreughwax. Now if you have a character that swaps roles or you are a heal (I leave tanks out as they will in their majority use heavey armor so are more out for ore and given the low number of tanks) you need several sets multiplying the need for Dreughwax by the gear sets in your inventory.

kojou · April 1

I hedge against inflation by only selling what I need to sell when I need to sell it. For example, if Dreugh wax is selling for 45K then I can sell just enough of it to get the gold I need to buy what I need, but if all of the sudden it goes up to 55k, then I can sell some at that price to get what I need. In other words prices don't impact me very much because I can always sell some things at the new price (if I even need to).

I would say that this definitely gives players with a craft bag an advantage in the economy as all the materials do not take space in my inventory, but any reset of gold will not affect long term players with a deep craft bag full of valuable materials. At one point a while back I used an add-on to estimate the value of what was in my craft bag and it was several hundreds of millions of gold worth of stuff and I am sure it has grown since then, and I am by far not even the richest player I know.

My preference would be that they at least stop giving gold as a log in reward to reduce the amount of "new" gold they are introducing in the economy, and add 1 or 2 trader NPC's to every zone to allow more guilds to participate in the economy (i.e. more supply), but other than that there is not much they can do at this point as there are too may long term players with a "dragon's hoard" of treasure that can manipulate the economy no matter what changes they make.

Dragonnord · April 1

I think economy is just fine as it is now.

Tommy_The_Gun · April 1

Dax_Draconis wrote: »

Craft bags have unlimited storage so there is little incentive to sell any mats at all unless the current market rate is temptingly high. Players with subscriptions can hoard them indefinitely.

If one would think about it, in theory it makes scalping crafting materials to manipulate prices possible. I mean, imagine if like 10 or more people would just buy off like 90% of the entire market supply of Platinum Ounce and then sell it at much higher price. Craft bag = no limit for how many mats one account can have.

sarahthes · April 1

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Dax_Draconis wrote: »

Craft bags have unlimited storage so there is little incentive to sell any mats at all unless the current market rate is temptingly high. Players with subscriptions can hoard them indefinitely.

If one would think about it, in theory it makes scalping crafting materials to manipulate prices possible. I mean, imagine if like 10 or more people would just buy off like 90% of the entire market supply of Platinum Ounce and then sell it at much higher price. Craft bag = no limit for how many mats one account can have.

I know someone who does this periodically. He picks a specific mat and buys out the entire map.

Sakiri · April 1

sarahthes wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Dax_Draconis wrote: »

Craft bags have unlimited storage so there is little incentive to sell any mats at all unless the current market rate is temptingly high. Players with subscriptions can hoard them indefinitely.

If one would think about it, in theory it makes scalping crafting materials to manipulate prices possible. I mean, imagine if like 10 or more people would just buy off like 90% of the entire market supply of Platinum Ounce and then sell it at much higher price. Craft bag = no limit for how many mats one account can have.

I know someone who does this periodically. He picks a specific mat and buys out the entire map.

This happens in other games.

I'm particularly thinking about World of Warcraft, where the inflation has gotten so bad that when I quit last summer, weapon enchants sold for 90,000 gold on US Area 52, and I hear they're worse now. Gold is also harder to make unless you're an AH goblin. I quit with like 2 or 3 million gold and for the first time in the history of the game, I felt POOR.

But from there, there's an idea for a gold sink. Black market auction house. Stick crown mounts on it, set a stupid high price and let people bid to oblivion. In wow there's certain items that go for gold cap.

NoTimeToWait · April 1

Sakiri wrote: »

sarahthes wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Dax_Draconis wrote: »

Craft bags have unlimited storage so there is little incentive to sell any mats at all unless the current market rate is temptingly high. Players with subscriptions can hoard them indefinitely.

If one would think about it, in theory it makes scalping crafting materials to manipulate prices possible. I mean, imagine if like 10 or more people would just buy off like 90% of the entire market supply of Platinum Ounce and then sell it at much higher price. Craft bag = no limit for how many mats one account can have.

I know someone who does this periodically. He picks a specific mat and buys out the entire map.

This happens in other games.

I'm particularly thinking about World of Warcraft, where the inflation has gotten so bad that when I quit last summer, weapon enchants sold for 90,000 gold on US Area 52, and I hear they're worse now. Gold is also harder to make unless you're an AH goblin. I quit with like 2 or 3 million gold and for the first time in the history of the game, I felt POOR.

But from there, there's an idea for a gold sink. Black market auction house. Stick crown mounts on it, set a stupid high price and let people bid to oblivion. In wow there's certain items that go for gold cap.

Black market AH for select exclusive items is actually a good idea. Basically, luxury furnisher with no price ceiling. But it really needs to have exclusive items too, because crown items would be inhibited by the current crown to gold ratio.

I actually like this idea A LOT. People want to brag about being rich in-game, why not give them a unique chance to become one of a single-digit number of owners of a certain cosmetic item from Black market AH that they can show off.

The Store works like said Luxury furnisher, with a couple of items being sold over a weekend, going to the highest bidder at the end. Items change every week and rotate over the year. So the first winner gets to be a sole owner for the whole year, before the item returns, after which there would be 2 owners etc. And the item visuals don't necessarily need to be better than crown store analogues, just good enough for showing off, the exclusivity will sell the items.

I am positive these items would sell for dozens if not hundreds millions of gold (and if the AH Seller has 10 items weekly, that's billions of gold taken out of economy every week)